| This master's thesis takes the form of a one-day symposium during which progressives Barbara Ehrenreich, Emma Goldman, and Mother Jones debate with capitalists Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Sam Walton. The question they debate is: "Were the immense cultural gains during the capitalist industrialization of the United States justified by the human cost?" The speakers examine nineteenth-century labor, social, and economic history; twentieth-century progress; and impact on the twenty-first century.;That capitalists subjugated millions of laborers cannot be denied. Equally true is that capitalists, during the Gilded Age (1870--1900), transformed the United States from an agrarian economy and minor nation into a corporate empire, a world power, and a center of cultural refinement.;Debate will lead to further study as a means of honoring nineteenth-century laborers, recognizing capitalists' contributions, and understanding our economic gap between the rich and the poor, one that has surpassed the nineteenth-century's economic gap. |
